[Gems-users] CPU accesses to L2 cache

["Daniele Bordes" <daniele.bordes@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Gems Users, I tried to run some simple simulations using Simics + Ruby.
The simulated machine is a 8-Sparc Processors with Solaris 9.
L2-cache is a D-NUCA cache with 256 banks.
I have noticed this fact (which seems to me strange) in ruby statistics:


In Ruby statistics, CPU0 number of accesses on L2-cache is MUCH
greater than other CPU's ones.

The fact is that I have set Solaris fsflush mechanism frequency to be
very very slow (by changing a parameter inside /etc/system and
rebooting), and if I type "ps -A" from simulated machine, I see only
this processes:

sched
init
pageout
fsflush
sh
ps


And if I type "prstat" inside simulated machine, I see this:

STATE     CPU    PROCESS
cpu3       0.0%     prstat
sleep      0.0%     sh
sleep      0.0%     init


So, in practice, the simulated machine seems to be "Idle", but there
are many accesses of CPU0 to L2 cache.

Since I am not a Solaris expert, does anybody know if this is correct?

I am sorry to be a nuisance.
Thank you very much.